In the new issue of Regulation, economist Pierre Lemieux argues that the recent oil price decline is at least partly the result of increased supply from the extraction of shale oil. The increased supply allows the economy to produce more goods, which benefits some people, if not all of them. Thus, contrary to some commentary in the press, cheaper oil prices cannot harm the economy as a whole.

Two long wars, chronic deficits, the financial crisis, the costly drug war, the growth of executive power under Presidents Bush and Obama, and the revelations about NSA abuses, have given rise to a growing libertarian movement in our country – with a greater focus on individual liberty and less government power. David Boaz’s newly released The Libertarian Mind is a comprehensive guide to the history, philosophy, and growth of the libertarian movement, with incisive analyses of today’s most pressing issues and policies.

But the Kelo decision wasn’t wrong because the Court was activist. It was wrong because the Court failed to actively enforce the Constitution’s restrictions on government. As Richard Epstein wrote in a Wall Street Journal column, “Justice Stevens’s lamentable opinion was the polar opposite of judicial activism. Indeed, it represented a deadly form of judicial deference to legislative action that makes a mockery of both the text and purposes of the ‘Public Use’ Clause.”

Of course, just to complicate the matter, one could say that a court is activist when it finds powers for government that are nowhere granted in the Constitution. In that case, the Kelo Court was activist.

Is discovering and enforcing the original meaning of the Ninth Amendment activism? Or is it activism to characterize this inconvenient piece of text as an “ink blot” on the Constitution, as Robert Bork did in his infamous confirmation testimony? …

Is it activism to construct a doctrine to define the wholly unenumerated “police power” of states in a manner that is consistent with the limits on state power enumerated in the Fourteenth Amendment? Or is it activism to give states unchecked power, notwithstanding the Fourteenth Amendment?

But conservatives cannot complain that the Kelo decision was another example of judges overriding the decisions of elected officials, which is their usual definition of “judicial activism.” In this case, the judges lamentably deferred to local elected officials, ignoring the property rights protections in the Constitution.